1. Sometimes I cook all fancy! I'm home visiting my folks, and my dad wanted to grill because he's been watching this grilling cooking show. But I basically don't eat meat except for fish, so we settled on tuna, because it doesn't stick to the grill. So this was yesterday's dinner:

2. Speaking of California, I often find staying with my parents somewhat frustrating (and helping my mom out with her work can be exceptionally frustrating).

But! Here are some of the things that California has in addition to fruit: It's-Its. Blue Bottle Coffee (<3<3<3). Tacos. Breakfast pastries at the Ferry Building. Boogaloo's amazing grilled plantain cakes. Persimmons from the tree in the backyard. Some friends I haven't seen in a while. Fan peoples. Thrift stores. An ocean.

3. There is going to be another Avatar: The Last Airbender (and Avatar: Legend of Korra) fanwork exchange over at white_lotus! I plan to ask for Korra/Chief Bei Fong, among other things, so it is basically guaranteed to include great things.

Anyway, if you are interested, there's a draft signup post to poke at (to make sure all your favorite characters are on the list!) and tomorrow there will be a draft rules post that take people's suggests from last year into account. And signups will start later this week!

As part of making it work this year, we've also made an AO3 collection for the challenge, so that people who want to play in an anon-slow-reveal challenge but also want to be able to edit their fanworks can play that way. People will still be able to just send us their fanworks and have them posted straight to the comm, but the AO3 thing should make it easier for people who are already using the AO3. (Plus we belatedly made a collection for last year, so if you want to you can submit your fanworks to the collection.)

4. Remember that top one hundred specfic works thing? I haven't forgotten it, I promise, I just got cranky when I organized everything for Condorcet voting on a website that said it would do it ... and then couldn't deal with 250 things in a list, Grr. And then I tried a bunch of other places, and they all would only do ten items or allow 50 voters or blahblah. I might end up just doing it in comments and uploading the data flat to a Condorcet calculator. (The short version of condorcet: it's sometimes called ranked-choice or instant-runnoff voting [though a lot of different methods end up being called these things, since the terms are used confusingly in news stories], and it's usually done for single-winner issues. It can be done for a multiple-winner issue, though, and I thought it would be fun because it would let people rank as many things as they wanted. It's a kind of neat alternative since it lets you rank things you hate low, and not have to do careful vote manipulation to make your vote "count." But APPARENTLY the javascript version of the Condorcet page crashes liek whoah.)

I am back at home -- I got back last night and then had liverelibre over for chats and eggnog. And then I woke up today in my own space, put on my pajamas, and read allmost some of the internets. (I still have like 200 things left in my google reader, of which about 195 are things that will make me angry or sad, and I haven't attempted tumblr at all, and also I skimmed a lot of dw.)

But! I am left with a dilemna. This is my dilemna:

I used up somemost all of the spoons running hobble-speed-walking in the airport yesterday, when my first (delayed) flight deboarded about twenty-five minutes before my second flight was scheduled to depart. So I hustled through the airport with my bags and jogged up and down many escalators and did complicated cane-and-bag swaps for the stairs and made it to the other terminal and collapsed by the door of my second flight twelve minutes before it was scheduled to depart and probably too late for them to still have the door open ... just as they switched the sign to "delayed." Fuckers. I had a whole hour and a half, as it turns out, and had they mentioned the maintenance delay on the departure info screen I might not have, you know, run through the airport.

Anyway, as a consequence I am doing "lying on sofa with hot pad" and not my planned "going grocery shopping." But it is nearing dinnertime, and I'm hungry, but I don't really want any of the delivery options, and there's no way I'm walking to the grocery store.

So! Internets, what would you make for dinner if you had: lots of cans of beans of various sorts, coconut milk, canned crushed/diced/sauced tomatoes, ww pasta, dry lentils, brown and black rice, various baking things including coconut and chocolate chips and butter and canola oil, dried fruit, oatmeal, frozen corn, four eggs that miraculously survived, and a square of cheddar cheese? All I can think of is black beans and eggs (which I had for lunch), black beans and rice (which is rather similar to what I had for lunch), and pasta + tomato sauce + cheese, which is not hugely nutritious but will be fine if I can't think of anything else.

PS: If your answer is "brownies," please be prepared to share a favorite recipe.

PPS: I might not get out tomorrow, and anyway this is often the contents of my cupboards when low on food, so additional suggestions are always welcome!

I'm at the Madison airport waiting for my flight. (I have just learned that visibility is below minimum takeoff levels, whee.) And so I was poking around looking for more information on when I found the airport's page on "Special Needs." Ready?

Skycaps can transport passengers both to the ticket desk and through security to the gate. It is best to contact your airline in advance if you will need special assistance at the airport, whether departing or arriving.

If you prefer to transport a person with disabilities into the terminal yourself, wheelchairs are generally available for use inside Door 2.

And the whole page is like that: I am a person with disabilities. I am not "you."

Park in short term parking, close by on the ramp, pick up a wheelchair (or ask for Skycap assistance) and transport the passenger from short term parking into the terminal.

At no point on the page does it indicate that PWD might, in fact, have their own wheelchairs. That they might prefer to use. In order to, you know, transport themselves.

I am in Sarasota, Florida, where I have been visiting family. I was booked on a flight out at 6 am.

The flight is delayed because the wings have iced over and Sarasota owns no deicing equipment. They're moving the plane over to where it'll be hit by the first morning sun at 7:20 or so. Seriously.

I would be cranky, especially since I might end up sitting in an airport for seven hours or something, but I'm more "...???" about it -- I mean, I know that this weather is unusual for Florida, and that it freezes sometimes but rarely stays cold this long, but: they're moving the plane over to what will be the sunny side of the airport.

A thing that really bothers me about all the recent air security talk is the assumption of certain kinds of "normal" bodies -- air security is merely an inconvenience to everyone, not an impossibility, because all bodies can do the things we ask.

1. sleeping in my comfy bed (well, as much as the jet lag will let me)

2. eating many meals made with lots of protein (how I ended up working somewhere with a cuisine that doesn't include tofu or tempeh or black beans or lentils or vegetarian protein I do not know)2a. eating chocolate (I ran out of chocolate-from-home two and a half weeks ago)2b. ESPRESSO.

7. playing Super Mario Galaxy nostalgically (guys, there is going to be Super Mario Galaxy 2! In January! OMG AWESOME.)

8. working on a kink_bingo story (begun in the middle of nowhere; turns out that when you write in hundred word increments in your five minutes of free time, you need to go back and put in a whole bunch of transitions)

So, in short, I am very happy to be home. And to see read all you guys! And to be able to comment on your posts and stuff! It is thrilling.

As I checked in, I noted that the boarding time up on the screen was later than the flight was supposed to, you know, LEAVE. "Oh," I said. "Is the flight delayed?" "Yes," said the gate agent, hustling me through so fast I couldn't see the screens, "about forty minutes."

"Ah," I said, realizing that this would make my (hour-and-a-half) connection tight, and resolving to check the scheduling online.

Then I looked at my boarding pass, and discovered they'd already done the rescheduling for me. Automatically. Now they've got me making an extra stop (Charles de Gaulle, wtf) and now I get in after the last metro. Srsly.

And then I checked my flight status online, and discovered that "forty minutes" was more "an hour and forty minutes."

And then I called Northwest. And I got, seriously, the best phone customer service person ever (thank you so much Roberta) and I spent an hour on the phone with her trying to work something out. (Let me just say, I have never had someone try to help me out that much over a delay that is under twelve hours. Amazing.)

Now? Well, I still have an extra stop (Milan, wtf) but I'm getting in while the metro is still running and, if I book and passport control isn't too bad, I might even make the overnight bus.

1. You can tell I'm traveling tomorrow because, at ten am this morning, I suddenly went "omg what if I booked my ticket wrong and am flying today omg what if? I must check immediately!" And I was at a cafe, you guys, so I couldn't check, and I was quietly panicked for like an hour.

I am maybe a little bit bad at international travel these days. Maybe just a little neurotic. Maybe.

2. But at least when I was on my way back from the cafe I bought 200 crosswords on newsprint paper, making them light AND entertaining! Good for spending many days (weeks, months) away from the internet.

3. I don't want to spend many days away from the internet.

4. I have these ongoing lists: charge mp3 player! ten passport photos! photocopy visa! and so on. Blech. I had plans to go to the library this afternoon and print all thus stuff out or photocopy it, and then I realized it was closed for renovations! Woe.

5. I am downloading lots of podfic for the summer. New podfic hurrah! I have, in the past, had very strange conversations with people on planes/in airports/in foreign countries about what I'm listening to. I usually say "... audiobook collections of short stories." But sometimes I forget and say "... podfic collections of short stories." Whoops.

6. I am going to miss you guys a lot. I hope I'll be able to check my rlist sometimes. *hugs everyone who likes hugs*

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I will be overseas with limited internet access from June 27 - September 6. Which is SEVENTY-TWO DAYS. That is a long time to be without the rlist, guys! (I usually have about fifteen minutes of internet a day, and can take fic/email back on a thumb drive to answer on my own computer; I may also have internet for a few hours on alternate Fridays no I am not joking.)

So! Here is what I want to ask you guys:

1) What fic would you take with you to a desert island internetless space?

2) I am on delicious at eruthros, and if you see something really awesome between now and September, I'd love it if you could tag it for: eruthros. Then when I am in the airport on the way back, I will have much to download and read on the plane!

2a) Or, you know, if you have the time for it? I also love care packages of emailed fic. This is way better'n the care packages other people get, which are, like, boxes of socks and hard candies.

3) If you feel like carrying on conversations in, like, old school email threading with lots of >> marks for quotation, I am at eruthros at gmail.

At about 7 pm, as I was just grabbing my bags to head out to BART to catch a flight back to the East Coast, I got a phone call from an unknown id. "Hello?" I said "Hello? Anybody there?"

And finally an automated voice responded: "Hello, this is Continental. Your flight has been canceled or delayed. Please call this number."

Me: Nooooo!

And then I phoned them. After dealing with the usual "all flights to your destination are booked until the 20th," they got me on a flight to a nearby small town that -- with luck -- I will be able to get a ride home from, or at least be able to catch a shuttle, just one day delayed.

So, here is why they're still the best option out of my small-town-airport: they phoned me before I ended up in Newark with a canceled connecting flight. They swapped cities without complaint. When I was flying out here, in December, US Airways had canceled an entire day's worth of flights, with all the passengers already at the airport, and then they didn't take rescheduling requests by phone, and there was a line a million people long waiting to try to figure out how to get to Rome or Virginia or whatever. Continental... well, I was inconvenienced, and getting home on Friday is going to be interesting (either slow or expensive), but they didn't strand me overnight in Newark or anything.

So, I never win anything. When it comes to raffles, I'm one of the left-over tickets going home without even a brownie; when I drop a card into a fishbowl at a convention, all I get is junk mail later.

But here is one place that I win all the time: I often end up on of the only two people on a plane with nobody sitting next to me in the middle row. Partly this is the result of being good at the algorithms that companies use to book seats on the plane, but partly it's just good luck. I was nearly bumped from my flight from Ithaca to Newark, because they were concerned that it was overbooked; I didn't get a seat assignment until five minutes before the plane took off.

... and I ended up sitting in the window seat in an overwing-exit row with nobody next to me. Seriously.

International travel is like childbirth. Your brain makes you forget the labor pains or you'd never do it again.

Oh my GOD, you guys. So there was the standard waiting-in-line-at-airport, which I did at SFO. Delta is way organized an' all, but also waaaaay busy, and even at 4.30 am the lines are long. And icky. And long. And me sitting there going "oh, please let me have time to fill my water bottles and get a cup of coffee on the other side of security." (As it turned out: coffee yes, water no, as drinking fountain broken. Cruel world.)

And then, you know, six hours on an airplane. And then a transfer in JFK, where I nearly got bumped but then the Delta dude got distracted. (I wouldn't have minded being bumped; they were promising a good night's sleep at a hotel and four hundred Delta dollars, whatever those are.)

And then, of course, another ten hours on an airplane. Where I did not get a window seat as I'd specified, and was instead in an aisle, where it is harder to get solid sleep. And where they kept showing ads and things all night, bright flashing Delta logos and awfulness.

And all of the other things about international travel as well: long lines at passport control, being reminded that people can smoke everywhere here, and another ten hour bus ride ahead of me. (On which I at least get a window seat, yay!)

Oh, and that bus ride? I can't get on it until 10 pm. It's 12:20 now. I might actually go back to the airport, because it's just over a dollar to take the metro, and the airport has air conditioning. And free wifi.

Basically: the world is kinda spinny and I don't care for it.

Also: y'all should be on IM and say hi before I get to the middle of nowhere and vanish forever.

So I finally finished packing -- I was nearly done, but despairing of those last few things, late last night. And then graycastle came by yesterday evening, AFTER she went out with some buddies to celebrate someone's exam, to help me disassemble my dresser. And she was also helpfully decisive at me, because by that point I was so over it that I was like "I don't know! What do I do with the dish drainer? Where does it GO? I only have three things left!1 Why can't I find places to put them!"

And then she let me sleep on her futon (as I had packed all my sheets) and gave me a beer. YAY. And lent me some tape, and helped me finish taping packages this morning. And then, after we had some coffee and muffins, my friend B. came by to pick up the Too Valuable To Let Landlord Put In Storage stuff (photos!), and drove it to graycastle's, and then me to the airport, and then I was done, thank god.

BLESS THEM BOTH, is what I'm saying. Never has the idea of a plane flight been so relaxing before. I plan to listen to podfic or maybe just music and nap, you guys. Naps! I am pro.

To have the airport shuttle fail to show up! Yeah! I waited for it for the scheduled time, and then for the extra fifteen minutes of "we may be fifteen minutes late," and ... no. Nothing. No shuttle.

So because I have no cell phone, I ran back to the apartment from the doorstep and called the yellow cab company. "What are your approximate rates to SFO?" I asked. "When do you need somebody?" he said. "I don't know if I need somebody until I know what it ... oh, fine, here's the address, I need someone now, NOW will you tell me what it will cost?" me, exasperated. "Rates? You mean average fares?" him, stonewalling. "Um, YEAH." Him: "Oh, about fifty dollars, early AM hours, somebody can be there in half an hour." "No THANKS," said I, as that is a) far too expensive (that's flat-rate from the East Bay!) and b) half an hour? I didn't have half an hour!

So instead I booked it to the mission street BART station at 4:40 am. Now, you may ask why this was not my first choice, and the answer is simple: Mission district. Laptop. Four-something-am. BUT I knew there was a 4:48 train that would get me to the airport an hour-plus before my flight (faster than the cab!), and I can totally do a half a mile of flat city streets in eight minutes, even with luggage and with having to get a ticket and get onto the train, right? Absolutely! I made it! With a minute to spare! *dance of successful BART run* Only then I was sweaty and icky and tired, which I really didn't need after being already tired from, you know, waking up at three-something and waiting for my 3:50 am airporter. That I may have mentioned DIDN'T SHOW UP.

Guys: my flight is at 8:50. I know the American bus system, and I know that there's a storm coming in, and that it's going to hit upstate New York before it hits Manhattan, which would stop the buses.

So I thought, okay, 8:50 pm. No stress. I shall wake up early, do the last minute tea dishes, grab my bags, and catch the 7:20 bus! It is supposed to get to New York at 12:00! And that way I have lots of leeway built in in case of stupid American bus system, or the Lincoln Tunnel, or whatever. Or maybe to switch flights at the airport.

And indeed, this I did. I suspect that 90% of the people awake and out and about at 7:20 am made the same choice, incidentally: in my mile-plus walk to the bus station (in 17 degree weather! with wind! and with ice! and dark!), I saw... three pedestrians, five police cars (or maybe the same police car five times), twelve cars, two Ithaca Bakery delivery trucks (this is why they never have the good bread at the Collegetown store before 7:00, even though they technically open at 6:30), and the staff at Green Star and Gimme! Coffee, neither of which was open.

At the bus station, however, I saw ... one hundred college students. Most with bags the size of, give or take, a Holstein. Now, I was one of the first twenty there, but that means nothing at Greyhound stations, which like to avoid the issue of forming lines or cordoning off space in favor of great rushing mobs.

And then the bus showed up. It already had forty-some people on it. It was late arriving, and the forty-some people all had to get out and buy tickets before they'd let new people on -- this is, seriously, the worst thought out system ever; they pick up on campus, but they don't sell tickets there, so. They could require people to buy tickets in advance at the student services place on College Avenue, but they do not. And then they let ten of the milling people on, but only ones with no luggage, because they'd filled every rack. (They'd known the bus was full since the driver radioed down, but that was the first point at which they radioed for another bus.) The 8:00 to Syracuse departed before the 7:20 bus did.

And I was like, hey, no problem, they radioed for another bus, they've promised us it'll be an express, I have, like, a bazillion hours built in, whatevs. And the second bus wouldn't be full, which would be nice. (Some of the hundred people were going to Syracuse.)

So we waited for the other bus... and waited... and waited... and it was fifteen minutes away. And it was fifteen minutes away. And it was fifteen minutes away.

When it finally arrived, we discovered that in fact it would not be an express bus because a) one of the women who'd been bumped was going to the Ridgewood Park and Ride, NJ and b) the bus driver was on the ninth hour of his shift, and could legally drive us only as far as Binghamton.

So we get to Binghamton, and the bus driver heads off to find out what's up (telling us all about his wife's dialysis as he went), shutting the door on us. And we sit. And we sit. He comes out of the terminal, talks to people, heads off in another direction, goes back in the terminal. We get antsy, and anyway we want to use the restroom. (One of the women eventually just goes "fuck it," figures out which level opens the door, and heads in. She is then roundly scolded by the counter staff: why aren't you waiting on the bus? Her: Because it's been fifteen minutes and I have to go to the bathroom? Them: Why must you make trouble? Fifteen minutes isn't that long! Her: Yeah, except I was supposed to get here two hours ago.)

"Wait, what?" we all say. Several more people get off the bus, off to investigate. One of them returns and reports back to everyone, because the counter staff clearly aren't going to do it: "They're looking for a driver. They don't have a driver. And they say we should stay on the bus and wait for them to tell us more."

The bus turns cold: they've had hours to find a driver. Most people on it are on flights at 4 or 5 pm. And we've waited for twenty minutes already without even a report.

Finally a woman from the counter shows up. Rejoicing! Perhaps an official briefing! Perhaps a driver! Oh, no, she's just here to find out where we're all going. "We're working on it," she says. I nap for a while, occasionally surfacing to complain with the linguist I met in the original terminal. (Adversity brings people together! We all watched each other's bags as people ran for Green Star or 7-11 or whatever. A nice physics grad student bought me a scone in exchange for watching her bags. The linguist was a Cornell grad, now a UCSC student, with Jim McCloskey. We shared stories of being cornered by Geoff Pullum at parties.) Said linguist has a flight at 4:30, and we're all getting steadily more ... and more ... and more ... pissed off.

Another dude shows up. He can't be our driver, because we've seen him wandering around the terminal for twenty minutes now.

Oh. He is our driver. And he doesn't apologize or anything for the delay, just "okay, New York." And off we go. We have to stop a couple of times (for him to use the restroom). And then we get to the Lincoln Tunnel. UCSC grad student dude is already sitting there all tense and ready to spring off at the drop of a hat.

And then there's a stall in the Tunnel. In our lane. Takes half an hour to clear. The bus is working on three hours late. We get to Port Authority, finally, and everyone scatters at the speed of light to their various transit choices to the airport.

So I finally got to the airport, and ... I can't switch to the earlier flight (too late), so I do have to wait for the 8:50. But I can't check in until 4:50. And all the amenities? Including wifi? And chairs? And electrical outlets? And food that isn't ice cream? Is on the other side of security.

I mean, the whole time it was happening I was like "eruthros! you've got seven hours built in! this is no big!" but I got sympathetic nerves from all the people with five pm flights. Blargh. *shakes self* It was exhausting: nobody telling you anything, ever, and having no faith in the system to remember your bus, and altogether ick. I'm exhausted and I haven't even done the flying yet! AND they're playing Christmas carols. *facepalm*

Rochester is equidistant, and equivalently priced, but the airport only runs little bitty planes, and it gets more snow, so I've opted out. But on the other hand, guys, the bus to Rochester? Doesn't have this mob scene.

***

Now through security! Fed a reasonably-priced freshly-made burrito! Sitting at my gate on JetBlue's wifi! Suddenly, the world is much better.

Well, except I'm still exhausted and my eyes are already dry and itchy, and I haven't even flown yet. But still! Better!